Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art

As a studio art major at Brandeis, you’ll find that you are treated like a real artist.

Our faculty are eager to help you take risks and blaze your unique trail as an artist through the media of painting, sculpture, printmaking, and digital media. Because we value both theory and practice, your art will be both shaped by your own explorations and informed by your study of art history. We are excited by the ideas and inquiries that you will bring from your liberal arts classes into the studio.

As a studio art major, you will learn that becoming an artist is about making art. You will develop a rigorous and introspective studio practice, the skills to engage in critical discussions about your own work and that of other artists, the ability to visually articulate meaning through form and a deep knowledge about the history of art and its theoretical and aesthetic foundations. Your growth as an artist will take place in a close-knit community of fellow emerging artists and scholars of art history.

Why Brandeis?

Brandeis is home to a thriving arts scene. In addition to state-of-the-art studios, we boast the renowned Rose Art Museum, an extraordinary 8,000-piece collection of European and American modernism, American social realism of the 1920s and ’30s, surrealism, abstract expressionism, pop, minimalism and encyclopedic coverage post-1970. Our department often partners with the Mandel Center for the Humanities to offer lectures and artists talks. And every year Brandeis celebrates its artists through the Leonard Bernstein Festival of Creative Arts, a 10-day showcase of drama, comedy, dance, art exhibitions, poetry readings and music.

Just minutes away, Boston and the surrounding area is a locus for superlative galleries and art institutions, including the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Peabody Essex Museum, and Harvard University’s many museums.

Academics and Research

Senior year, you might choose to commit to a rigorous and explorative year of making and developing your personal vision in the studio, in addition to senior studio. The year includes studio visits with Brandeis faculty and visiting artists as well as group critiques. View the studio art honors information.

Faculty Excellence

Our studio faculty are esteemed professional painters, sculptors and media artists. They have exhibited at major galleries and museums in New York, New England, elsewhere throughout the United States and internationally.

Our art historians are world experts in their fields and publish widely. Among their notable books are the standard works on contemporary art, Palestinian art, and early medieval architecture, and monographs on Nicolas Poussin, Georgia O’Keefe, Frida Kahlo and Kang Youwei. They have contributed to exhibition catalogs at the Musée du Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Tate Modern, London.

They are also gifted teachers who are dedicated to transmitting their knowledge and passion to you.

Outside the Classroom

Studio Art students take part in a range of socially and politically engaged activities from internships and independent projects to field trips and out-of-the-classroom events. Majors and minors have worked on projects with environmental activists and artists, they have interned with organizations devoted to democratizing museums, creating street art, expanding museum education, and pursuing arts and environmental justice.

If you are a first year, sophomore or junior with a strong interest and scholastic record in fine arts, you may apply for this award. Remis grants help finance research, tuition at arts-focused programs and art supplies during the summer.

The Rose Art Museum, on campus, offers summer and year-long curatorial internships to Brandeis students interested in exploring the potential of a museum career.

We can also help you find internships at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Institute of Contemporary Art; New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum; and many other museums and galleries across the country.

The Brandeis in Siena program is an exciting summer program combining studio experience, art history coursework, and field trips to historic cultural sites in Tuscany. Through this culturally immersive learning experience you’ll come in direct contact with seminal works in the canon of art history and Western culture. For more study abroad opportunities, visit the study abroad website.

Graduate Study and Career Opportunities

If you’re a senior, you may apply for a Mortimer Hays-Brandeis Traveling Fellowship, which provides travel and living expenses outside the continental United States for one year once you’ve earned your undergraduate degree. Past recipients have traveled to the Canadian Arctic, South Korea, Colombia, Russia and Ecuador, among other places, for research and scholarly production.

You might choose to complement a major in studio art with a minor in art history, sculpture or architectural studies. See the requirements for these minors in the University Bulletin.

Undergraduate Advising Head

Contact Professor Joseph Wardwell to learn more about how the studio art curriculum is structured and what you need to do to major in this field.

“Developing a comprehensive studio practice during my undergraduate at Brandeis encouraged me to think creatively in a wide range of subjects. And conversely, other subjects provided me with fresh ideas to experiment with in the studio.”

Yage Wang ’18

Student and Faculty Experiences

A Look Into the Studio Art Program at Brandeis

The Studio Art Program cultivates and nurtures students’ personal visions through the practice of the various creative disciplines, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, and digital media.

“We treat the students like artists. We expect them to come in and work like artists.” — Tory Fair, associate professor of sculpture